83

My Words to
Victor Frankenstein
Above the Village of
Chamounix
– Performing Transgender Rage *

BY SUSAN STRYKER

T he following work
is a textual adaptation of a performance
piece originally presented at “Rage Across
the Disciplines,” an arts, humanities, and
social sciences conference held June 10-12,
1993 at California State University, San
Marcos. The interdisciplinary nature of the
conference, its theme, and the organizers’
call for both performances and academic
papers inspired me to be creative in my
mode of presenting a topic then much on
my mind. As a member of Transgender Na-
tion – a militantly queer, direct action
transsexual advocacy group – I was at the
time involved in organizing a disruption
and protest at the American Psychiatric As-
sociation’s 1993 annual meeting in San
Francisco. A good deal of the discussion at
our planning meetings concerned how to
harness the intense emotions emanating
from transsexual experience – especially
rage – and mobilize them into effective po-
litical actions. I was intrigued by the
ESSAY prospect of critically examining this rage in
84 KVINDER, KØN & FORSKNING NR. 3-4 2011

a more academic setting through an idio- like the monster, direct against the condi-
syncratic application of the concept of gen- tions in which I must struggle to exist.
der performativity. My idea was to perform I am not the first to link Frankenstein’s
self-consciously a queer gender rather than monster and the transsexual body. Mary
simply talk about it, thus embodying and Daly makes the connection explicit by dis-
enacting the concept simultaneously under cussing transsexuality in “Boundary Viola-
discussion. I wanted the formal structure of tion and the Frankenstein Phenomenon,”
the work to express a transgender aesthetic in which she characterizes transsexuals as
by replicating our abrupt, often jarring the agents of a “necrophilic invasion’’ of
transitions between genders – challenging female space (69-72). Janice Raymond,
generic classification with the forms of my who acknowledges Daly as a formative in-
words, just as my transsexuality challenges fluence, is less direct when she says that
the conventions of legitimate gender and “the problem of transsexuality would best
my performance in the conference room be served by morally mandating it out of
challenged the boundaries of acceptable existence,” but in this statement she never-
academic discourse. During the perfor- theless echoes Victor Frankenstein’s feel-
mance, I stood at the podium wearing gen- ings toward the monster: “Begone, vile in-
derfuck drag-combat boots, threadbare sect, or rather, stay, that I may trample you
Levi 501’s over a black lace body suit, a to dust. You reproach me with your crea-
shredded Transgender Nation T-shirt with tion” (Raymond 178, Shelley 95). It is a
the neck and sleeves cut out, a pink triangle commonplace of literary criticism to note
quartz crystal pendant, grunge metal jewel- that Frankenstein’s monster is his own
ry, arid a six-inch long marlin hook dang- dark, romantic double, the alien Other he
ling around my neck on a length of heavy constructs and upon which he projects all
stainless steel chain. I decorated the set by he cannot accept in himself; indeed,
draping my black leather hiker jacket over Frankenstein calls the monster ‘‘my own
my chair at the panelists’ table. The jacket vampire, my own spirit set loose from the
had handcuffs on the left shoulder, rainbow grave” (Shelley 74). Might I suggest that
freedom rings on the right side lacings, and Daly, Raymond and others of their ilk simi-
Queer Nation-style stickers reading SEX larly construct the transsexual as their own
CHANGE, DYKE, and FUCK YOUR particular golem?1
TRANSPHOBIA plastered on the back. The attribution of monstrosity remains a
palpable characteristic of most lesbian and
gay representations of transsexuality, dis-
MONOLOGUE playing in unnerving detail the anxious,
The transsexual body is an unnatural body. fearful underside of the current cultural
It is the product of medical science. It is a fascination with transgenderism.2 Because
technological construction. It is flesh torn transsexuality more than any other trans-
apart and sewn together again in a shape gender practice or identity represents the
other than that in which it was born. In prospect of destabilizing the foundational
these circumstances, I find a deep affinity presupposition of fixed genders upon
between myself as a transsexual woman and which a politics of personal identity de-
the monster in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. pends, people who have invested their aspi-
Like the monster, I am too often perceived rations for social justice in identitarian
as less than fully human due to the means movements say things about us out of sheer
of my embodiment; like the monster’s as panic that, if said of other minorities,
well, my exclusion from human community would see print only in the most hate-rid-
fuels a deep and abiding rage in me that I, dled, white supremacist, Christian fascist
MY WORDS TO VICTOR FRANKENSTEIN 85

rags. To quote extensively from one letter stroy transsexual lives. On January 5, 1993,
to the editor of a popular San Francisco a 22-year-old pre-operative transsexual
gay/lesbian periodical: woman from Seattle’s queer community,
Filisa Vistima, wrote in her journal, “I wish
I consider transsexualism to be a fraud, and I was anatomically ‘normal’ so I could go
the participants in it … perverted. The trans- swimming. … But no, I’m a mutant,
sexual [claims] he/she needs to change his/ Frankenstein’s monster.” Two months later
her body in order to be his/her “true self.” Filisa Vistima committed suicide. What
Because this “true self’ requires another drove her to such despair was the exclusion
physical form in which to manifest itself, it she experienced in Seattle’s queer com-
must therefore war with nature. One cannot munity, some members of which opposed
change one’s gender. What occurs is a clever- Filisa’s participation because of her trans-
ly manipulated exterior: what has been done sexuality – even though she identified as
is mutation. What exists beneath the de- and lived as a bisexual woman. The Lesbian
formed surface is the same person who was Resource Center where she served as a vo-
there prior to the deformity. People who lunteer conducted a survey of its consti-
break or deform their bodies [act] out the tuency to determine whether it should stop
sick farce of a deluded, patriarchal approach offering services to male-to-female trans-
to nature, alienated from true being. sexuals. Filisa did the data entry for tabulat-
ing the survey results; she didn’t have to
Referring by name to one particular per- imagine how people felt about her kind.
son, self-identified as a transsexual lesbian, The Seattle Bisexual Women’s Network an-
whom she had heard speak in a public fo- nounced that if it admitted transsexuals the
rum at the San Francisco Women’s Build- SBWN would no longer be a women’s or-
ing, the letter-writer went on to say: ganization. “‘I’m sure,” one member said
in reference to the inclusion of bisexual
When an estrogenated man with breasts loves transsexual women, “the boys can take care
a woman, that is not lesbianism, that is muti- of themselves.” Filisa Vistima was not a
lated perversion. [This individual] is not a boy, and she found it impossible to take
threat to the lesbian community, he is an out- care of herself. Even in death she found no
rage to us. He is not a lesbian, he is a mutant support from the community in which she
man, a self-made freak, a deformity, an insult. claimed membership. “Why didn’t Filisa
He deserves a slap in the face. After that, he commit herself for psychiatric care?” asked
deserves to have his body and mind made a columnist in the Seattle Gay News. “Why
well again.3 didn’t Filisa demand her civil rights?” In
this case, not only did the angry villagers
When such beings as these tell me I war hound their monster to the edge of town,
with nature, I find no more reason to they reproached her for being vulnerable to
mourn my opposition to them – or to the the torches. Did Filisa Vistima commit sui-
order they claim to represent – than cide, or did the queer community of Seattle
Frankenstein’s monster felt in its enmity to kill her?4
the human race. I do not fall from the I want to lay claim to the dark power of
grace of their company – I roar gleefully my monstrous identity without using it as a
away from it like a Harley-straddling, dildo- weapon against others or being wounded
packing leatherdyke from hell. by it myself. I will say this as bluntly as I
The stigmatization fostered by this sort know how: I am a transsexual, and there-
of pejorative labelling is not without conse- fore I am a monster. Just as the words
quence. Such words have the power to de- “dyke,” “fag,” “queer,” “slut,” and
86 KVINDER, KØN & FORSKNING NR. 3-4 2011

“whore” have been reclaimed, respectively, of the privilege you seek to maintain for
by lesbians and gay men, by anti-assimila- yourself at my expense. You are as con-
tionist sexual minorities, by women who structed as me; the same anarchic womb
pursue erotic pleasure, and by sex industry has birthed us both. I call upon you to in-
workers, words like ‘‘creature,” ‘‘monster,” vestigate your nature as I have been com-
and ‘‘unnatural” need to be reclaimed by pelled to confront mine. I challenge you to
the transgendered. By embracing and ac- risk abjection and flourish as well as have I.
cepting them, even piling one on top of an- Heed my words, and you may well discover
other, we may dispel their ability to harm the seams and sutures in yourself.
us. A creature, after all, in the dominant
tradition of Western European culture, is
nothing other than a created being, a made CRITICISM
thing. The affront you humans take at be- In answer to the question he poses in the
ing called a “creature” results from the title of his recent essay, “What is a Mon-
threat the term poses to your status as ster? (According to Frankenstein),” Peter
“lords of creation,” beings elevated above Brooks suggests that, whatever else a mon-
mere material existence. As in the case of ster might be, it “may also be that which
being called “it,” being called a “creature” eludes gender definition” (229). Brooks
suggests the lack or loss of a superior per- reads Mary Shelley’s story of an overreach-
sonhood. I find no shame, however, in ac- ing scientist and his troublesome creation
knowledging my egalitarian relationship as an early dissent from the nineteenth-cen-
with non-human material Being; every- tury realist literary tradition, which had not
thing emerges from the same matrix of pos- yet attained dominance as a narrative form.
sibilities. “Monster” is derived from the He understands Frankenstein to unfold
Latin noun monstrum, “divine portent,” it- textually through a narrative strategy gen-
self formed on the root of the verb monere, erated by tension between a visually orient-
“to warn.” It came to refer to living things ed epistemology, on the one hand, and an-
of anomalous shape or structure, or to fab- other approach to knowing the truth of
ulous creatures like the sphinx who were bodies that privileges verbal linguisticality,
composed of strikingly incongruous parts, on the other (199-200). Knowing by see-
because the ancients considered the appear- ing and knowing by speaking/hearing are
ance of such beings to be a sign of some gendered, respectively, as masculine and
impending supernatural event. Monsters, feminine in the critical framework within
like angels, functioned as messengers and which Brooks operates. Considered in this
heralds of the extraordinary. They served to context, Shelley’s text is informed by – and
announce impending revelation, saying, in critiques from a woman’s point of view –
effect, “Pay attention; something of pro- the contemporary reordering of knowledge
found importance is happening.” brought about by the increasingly com-
Hearken unto me, fellow creatures. I pelling truth claims of Enlightenment
who have dwelt in a form unmatched with science. The monster problematizes gen-
my desire, I whose flesh has become an as- der partly through its failure as a viable
semblage of incongruous anatomical parts, subject in the visual field; though referred
I who achieve the similitude of a natural to as “he,” it thus offers a feminine, and
body only through an unnatural process, I potentially feminist, resistance to definition
offer you this warning: the Nature you be- by a phallicized scopophilia. The monster
devil me with is a lie. Do not trust it to accomplishes this resistance by mastering
protect you from what I represent, for it is language in order to claim a position as
a fabrication that cloaks the groundlessness a speaking subject and enact verbally the
MY WORDS TO VICTOR FRANKENSTEIN 87

very subjectivity denied it in the specular im, it learns something of its situation in
realm.5 the world, and rather than bless its creator,
Transsexual monstrosity, however, along the monster curses him. The very success of
with its affect, transgender rage, can never Mary Shelley’s scientist in his self-appoint-
claim quite so secure a means of resistance ed task thus paradoxically proves its futility:
because of the inability of language to re- rather than demonstrate Frankenstein’s
present the transgendered subject’s move- power over materiality, the newly enlivened
ment over time between stably gendered body of the creature attests to its maker’s
positions in a linguistic structure. Our situ- failure to attain the mastery he sought.
ation effectively reverses the one encoun- Frankenstein cannot control the mind and
tered by Frankenstein’s monster. Unlike feelings of the monster he makes. It ex-
the monster, we often successfully cite the ceeds and refutes his purposes.
culture’s visual norms of gendered embodi- My own experience as a transsexual par-
ment. This citation becomes a subversive allels the monster’s in this regard. The
resistance when, through a provisional use consciousness shaped by the transsexual
of language, we verbally declare the unnat- body is no more the creation of the science
uralness of our claim to the subject posi- that refigures its flesh than the monster’s
tions we nevertheless occupy.6 mind is the creation of Frankenstein. The
The prospect of a monster with a life and agenda that produced hormonal and surgi-
will of its own is a principal source of hor- cal sex reassignment techniques is no less
ror for Frankenstein. The scientist has tak- pretentious, and no more noble, than
en up his project with a specific goal in Frankenstein’s. Heroic doctors still endeav-
mind – nothing less than the intent to sub- or to triumph over nature. The scientific
ject nature completely to his power. He discourse that produced sex reassignment
finds a means to accomplish his desires techniques is inseparable from the pursuit
through modern science, whose devotees, of immortality through the perfection of
it seems to him, “have acquired new and al- the body, the fantasy of total mastery
most unlimited powers; they can command through the transcendence of an absolute
the thunders of heaven, mimic the earth- limit, and the hubristic desire to create life
quake, and even mock the invisible world itself.7 Its genealogy emerges from a meta-
with its shadows. ... More, far more, will I physical quest older than modern science,
achieve,” thought Frankenstein. “I will pio- and its cultural politics are aligned with a
neer a new way, explore unknown powers, deeply conservative attempt to stabilize
and unfold to the world the deepest mys- gendered identity in service of the natural-
teries of creation” (Shelley 47). The fruit ized heterosexual order.
of his efforts is not, however, what None of this, however, precludes med-
Frankenstein anticipated. The rapture he ically constructed transsexual bodies from
expected to experience at the awakening of being viable sites of subjectivity. Nor does
his creature turned immediately to dread. it guarantee the compliance of subjects thus
“I saw the dull yellow eyes of the creature embodied with the agenda that resulted in
open. … His jaws opened, and he muttered a transsexual means of embodiment. As we
some inarticulate sounds, while a grin rise up from the operating tables of our re-
wrinkled his cheeks. He might have spo- birth, we transsexuals are something more,
ken, but I did not hear; one hand was and something other, than the creatures
stretched out, seemingly to detain me, but our makers intended us to be. Though
I escaped” (Shelley 56, 57). The monster medical techniques for sex reassignment are
escapes, too, and parts company with its capable of crafting bodies that satisfy the vi-
maker for a number of years. In the inter- sual and morphological criteria that gener-
88 KVINDER, KØN & FORSKNING NR. 3-4 2011

ate naturalness as their effect, engaging et it took as it fled the laboratory, the mon-
with those very techniques produces a sub- ster finds Victor Frankenstein’s journal, and
jective experience that belies the naturalistic learns the particulars of its creation. “I sick-
effect biomedical technology can achieve. ened as I read,” the monster says. “Increase
Transsexual embodiment, like the embodi- of knowledge only discovered to me what a
ment of the monster, places its subject in wretched outcast I was” (Shelley 124,
an unassimilable, antagonistic, queer rela- 125).
tionship to a Nature in which it must ne- Upon learning its history and experienc-
vertheless exist. ing the rejection of all to whom it reached
Frankenstein’s monster articulates its un- out for companionship, the creature’s life
natural situation within the natural world takes a dark turn. “My feelings were those
with far more sophistication in Shelley’s of rage and revenge,” the monster declares.
novel than might be expected by those fa- “I, like the arch-fiend, bore a hell within
miliar only with the version played by Boris me” (130). It would have been happy to
Karloff in James Whale’s classic films from destroy all of Nature, but it settles, finally,
the 1930s. Film critic Vito Russo suggests on a more expedient plan to murder sys-
that Whale’s interpretation of the monster tematically all those whom Victor Fran-
was influenced by the fact that the director kenstein loves. Once Frankenstein realizes
was a closeted gay man at the time he made that his own abandoned creation is respon-
his Frankenstein films. The pathos he im- sible for the deaths of those most dear to
parted to his monster derived from the ex- him, he retreats in remorse to a mountain
perience of his own hidden sexual identity.8 village above his native Geneva to ponder
Monstrous and unnatural in the eyes of the his complicity in the crimes the monster
world, but seeking only the love of his own has committed. While hiking on the gla-
kind and the acceptance of human society, ciers in the shadow of Mont Blanc, above
Whale’s creature externalizes and renders the village of Chamounix, Frankenstein
visible the nightmarish loneliness and alien- spies a familiar figure approaching him
ation that the closet can breed. But this is across the ice. Of course, it is the monster,
not the monster who speaks to me so po- who demands an audience with its maker.
tently of my own situation as an openly Frankenstein agrees, and the two retire to-
transsexual being. I emulate instead Mary gether to a mountaineer’s cabin. There, in
Shelley’s literary monster, who is quick-wit- a monologue that occupies nearly a quarter
ted, agile, strong, and eloquent. of the novel, the monster tells Frankenstein
In the novel, the creature flees Franken- the tale of its creation from its own point of
stein’s laboratory and hides in the solitude view, explaining to him how it became so
of the Alps, where, by stealthy observation enraged.
of the people it happens to meet, it gradu- These are my words to Victor Franken-
ally acquires a knowledge of language, liter- stein, above the village of Chamounix. Like
ature, and the conventions of European so- the monster, I could speak of my earliest
ciety. At first it knows little of its own con- memories, and how I became aware of my
dition. “I had never yet seen a being resem- difference from everyone around me. I can
bling me, or who claimed any intercourse describe how I acquired a monstrous iden-
with me,” the monster notes. “What did tity by taking on the label “transsexual” to
this mean? Who was I? What was I? name parts of myself that I could not oth-
Whence did I come? What was my destina- erwise explain. I, too, have discovered the
tion? These questions continually recurred, journals of the men who made my body,
but I was unable to solve them” (Shelley and who have made the bodies of creatures
116, 130). Then, in the pocket of the jack- like me since the 1930s. I know in intimate
MY WORDS TO VICTOR FRANKENSTEIN 89

detail the history of this recent medical in- the hospital staff thought of our little tribe
tervention into the enactment of transgen- swarming all over the delivery room:
dered subjectivity; science seeks to contain Stephanie, the midwife; Paul, the baby’s fa-
and colonize the radical threat posed by a ther; Kim’s sister Gwen; my son Wilson
particular transgender strategy of resistance and me; and the two other women who
to the coerciveness of gender: physical al- make up our family, Anne and Heather.
teration of the genitals.9 I live daily with And of course Kim and the baby. She
the consequences of medicine’s definition named her Denali, after the mountain in
of my identity as an emotional disorder. Alaska. I don’t think the medical folks had
Through the filter of this official patholo- a clue as to how we all considered ourselves
gization, the sounds that come out of my to be related to each other. When the labor
mouth can be summarily dismissed as the first began we all took turns shifting be-
confused ranting of a diseased mind. tween various supporting roles, but as the
Like the monster, the longer I live in ordeal progressed we settled into a more
these conditions, the more rage I harbor. stable pattern. I found myself acting as
Rage colors me as it presses in through the birth coach. Hour after hour, through
pores of my skin, soaking in until it be- dozens of sets of contractions, I focused
comes the blood that courses through my everything on Kim, helping her stay in con-
beating heart. It is a rage bred by the ne- trol of her emotions as she gave herself over
cessity of existing in external circumstances to this inexorable process, holding on to
that work against my survival. But there is her eyes with mine to keep the pain from
yet another rage within. throwing her out of her body, breathing
every breath with her, being a companion.
I participated, step by increasingly intimate
JOURNAL (FEBRUARY 18, 1993) step, in the ritual transformation of con-
Kim sat between my spread legs, her back sciousness surrounding her daughter’s
to me, her tailbone on the edge of the birth. Birth rituals work to prepare the self
table. Her left hand gripped my thigh so for a profound opening, an opening as psy-
hard the bruises are still there a week later. chic as it is corporeal. Kim’s body brought
Sweating and bellowing, she pushed one this ritual process to a dramatic resolution
last time and the baby finally came. for her, culminating in a visceral, cathartic
Through my lover’s back, against the skin experience. But my body left me hanging. I
of my own belly, I felt a child move out of had gone on a journey to the point at
another woman’s body and into the world. which my companion had to go on alone,
Strangers’ hands snatched it away to suc- and I needed to finish my trip for myself.
tion the sticky green meconium from its To conclude the birth ritual I had partici-
airways. “It’s a girl,” somebody said. Paul, pated in, I needed to move something in
I think. Why, just then, did a jumble of me as profound as a whole human life.
dark, unsolicited feelings emerge wordlessly I floated home from the hospital, filled
from some quiet back corner of my mind? with a vital energy that wouldn’t discharge.
This moment of miracles was not the time I puttered about until I was alone: my ex
to deal with them. I pushed them back, had come over for Wilson; Kim and Denali
knowing they were too strong to avoid for were still at the hospital with Paul;
long. Stephanie had gone, and everyone else was
After three days we were all exhausted, out for a much-needed walk. Finally, in the
slightly disappointed that complications solitude of my home, I burst apart like a
had forced us to go to Kaiser instead of wet paper bag and spilled the emotional
having the birth at home. I wonder what contents of my life through the hands I
90 KVINDER, KØN & FORSKNING NR. 3-4 2011

cupped like a sieve over my face. For days, much strife between us, makes the bitter-
as I had accompanied my partner on her ness of our separation somewhat sweet. On
journey, I had been progressively opening the day of the birth, this past loss was pre-
myself and preparing to let go of whatever sent even in its partial recovery; held up be-
was deepest within. Now everything in me side the newfound fullness in my life, it
flowed out, moving up from inside and out evoked a poignant, hopeful sadness that in-
through my throat, my mouth because undated me.
these things could never pass between the Frustration and anger soon welled up in
lips of my cunt. I knew the darkness I had abundance. In spite of all I’d accomplished,
glimpsed earlier would reemerge, but I had my identity still felt so tenuous. Every cir-
vast oceans of feeling to experience before cumstance of life seemed to conspire
that came up again. against me in one vast, composite act of in-
Simple joy in the presence of new life validation and erasure. In the body I was
came bubbling out first, wave after wave of born with, I had been invisible as the per-
it. I was so incredibly happy. I was so in son I considered myself to be; I had been
love with Kim, had so much admiration for invisible as a queer while the form of my
her strength and courage. I felt pride and body made my desires look straight. Now,
excitement about the queer family we were as a dyke I am invisible among women; as a
building with Wilson, Anne, Heather, transsexual, I am invisible among dykes. As
Denali, and whatever babies would follow. the partner of a new mother, I am often in-
We’ve all tasted an exhilarating possibility visible as a transsexual, a woman, and a les-
in communal living and these nurturing, bian – I’ve lost track of the friends and ac-
bonded kinships for which we have no ade- quaintances these past nine months who’ve
quate names. We joke about pioneering on asked me if I was the father. It shows so
a reverse frontier: venturing into the heart dramatically how much they simply don’t
of civilization itself to reclaim biological re- get what I’m doing with my body. The
production from heterosexism and free it high price of whatever visible, intelligible,
for our own uses. We’re fierce; in a world self-representation I have achieved makes
of “traditional family values,” we need to the continuing experience of invisibility
be. maddeningly difficult to bear.
Sometimes, though, I still mourn the The collective assumptions of the natu-
passing of old, more familiar ways. It ralized order soon overwhelmed me. Na-
wasn’t too long ago that my ex and I were ture exerts such a hegemonic oppression.
married, woman and man. That love had Suddenly I felt lost and scared, lonely and
been genuine, and the grief over its loss confused. How did that little Mormon boy
real. I had always wanted intimacy with from Oklahoma I used to be grow up to be
women more than intimacy with men, and a transsexual leatherdyke in San Francisco
that wanting had always felt queer to me. with a Berkeley Ph.D.? Keeping my bear-
She needed it to appear straight. The shape ings on such a long and strange trip seemed
of my flesh was a barrier that estranged me a ludicrous proposition. Home was so far
from my desire. Like a body without a gone behind me it was gone forever, and
mouth, I was starving in the midst of plen- there was no place to rest. Battered by
ty. I would not let myself starve, even if heavy emotions, a little dazed, I felt the in-
what it took to open myself for a deep con- ner walls that protect me dissolve to leave
nectedness cut off the deepest connections me vulnerable to all that could harm me. I
I actually had. So I abandoned one life and cried, and abandoned myself to abject de-
built this new one. The fact that she and I spair over what gender had done to me.
have begun getting along again, after so
MY WORDS TO VICTOR FRANKENSTEIN 91

Everything’s fucked up beyond all recognition. Here at last is the chaos I held at bay.
This hurts too much to go on. I came as close to- Here at last is my strength.
day as I’ll ever come to giving birth – literally. I am not the water –
My body can’t do that; I can’t even bleed with- I am the wave,
out a wound, and yet I claim to be a woman. and rage
How? Why have I always felt that way? I’m is the force that moves me.
such a goddamned freak. I can never be a
woman like other women, but I could never be Rage
a man. Maybe there really is no place for me in gives me back my body
all creation. I’m so tired of this ceaseless move- as its own fluid medium.
ment. I do war with nature. I am alienated
from Being. I’m a self-mutilated deformity, a Rage
pervert, a mutant, trapped in monstrous flesh. punches a hole in water
God, I never wanted to be trapped again. I’ve around which I coalesce
destroyed myself. I’m falling into darkness, I to allow the flow to come through me.
am falling apart.
I enter the realm of my dreams. I am under- Rage
water, swimming upwards. It is dark. I see a constitutes me in my primal form.
shimmering light above me. I break through the It throws my head back
plane of the water’s surface with my lungs pulls my lips back over my teeth
bursting. I suck for air – and find only more opens my throat
water. My lungs are full of water. Inside and and rears me up to howl:
out I am surrounded by it. Why am I not dead : and no sound
if there is no difference between me and what I dilutes
am in? There is another surface above me and I the pure quality of my rage.
swim frantically towards it. I see a shimmering
light. I break the plane of the water’s surface No sound
over and over and over again. This water an- exists
nihilates me. I cannot be, and yet – an excruci- in this place without language
ating impossibility – I am. I will do anything my rage is a silent raving.
not to be here.
Rage
I will swim forever. throws me back at last
I will die for eternity. into this mundane reality
I will learn to breathe water. in this transfigured flesh
I will become the water. that aligns me with the power of my Be-
If I cannot change my situation I will ing.
change myself.
In birthing my rage,
In this act of magical transformation my rage has rebirthed me.
I recognize myself again.

I am groundless and boundless movement. THEORY

I am a furious flow. A formal disjunction seems particularly ap-
I am one with the darkness and the wet. propriate at this moment because the affect
I seek to examine critically, what I’ve
And I am enraged. termed “transgender rage,” emerges from
the interstices of discursive practices and at
92 KVINDER, KØN & FORSKNING NR. 3-4 2011

the collapse of generic categories. The rage them provisional, open to strategic devel-
itself is generated by the subject’s situation opment and occupation, this rage enables
in a field governed by the unstable but in- the establishment of subjects in new
dissoluble relationship between language modes, regulated by different codes of in-
and materiality, a situation in which lan- telligibility. Transgender rage furnishes a
guage organizes and brings into significa- means for disidentification with compulso-
tion matter that simultaneously eludes de- rily assigned subject positions. It makes the
finitive representation and demands its own transition from one gendered subject posi-
perpetual rearticulation in symbolic terms. tion to another possible by using the im-
Within this dynamic field the subject must possibility of complete subjective foreclo-
constantly police the boundary constructed sure to organize an outside force as an in-
by its own founding in order to maintain side drive, and vice versa. Through the op-
the fictions of “inside” and “outside” eration of rage, the stigma itself becomes
against a regime of signification/material- the source of transformative power.10
ization whose intrinsic instability produces I want to stop and theorize at this partic-
the rupture of subjective boundaries as one ular moment in the text because in the
of its regular features. The affect of rage as lived moment of being thrown back from a
I seek to define it is located at the margin state of abjection in the aftermath of my
of subjectivity and the limit of signification. lover’s daughter’s birth, I immediately be-
It originates in recognition of the fact that gan telling myself a story to explain my ex-
the “outsideness” of a materiality that per- perience. I started theorizing, using all the
petually violates the foreclosure of subjec- conceptual tools my education had put at
tive space within a symbolic order is also my disposal. Other true stories of those
necessarily “inside” the subject as grounds events could undoubtedly be told, but up-
for the materialization of its body and the on my return I knew for a fact what lit the
formation of its bodily ego. fuse to my rage in the hospital delivery
This primary rage becomes specifically room. It was the non-consensuality of the
transgender rage when the inability to fore- baby’s gendering. You see, I told myself,
close the subject occurs through a failure to wiping snot off my face with a shirt sleeve,
satisfy norms of gendered embodiment. bodies are rendered meaningful only
Transgender rage is the subjective experi- through some culturally and historically
ence of being compelled to transgress what specific mode of grasping their physicality
Judith Butler has referred to as the highly that transforms the flesh into a useful arti-
gendered regulatory schemata that deter- fact. Gendering is the initial step in this
mine the viability of bodies, of being com- transformation, inseparable from the
pelled to enter a “domain of abjected bod- process of forming an identity by means of
ies, a field of deformation” that in its unliv- which we’re fitted to a system of exchange
ability encompasses and constitutes the in a heterosexual economy. Authority seizes
realm of legitimate subjectivity (16). Trans- upon specific material qualities of the flesh,
gender rage is a queer fury, an emotional particularly the genitals, as outward indica-
response to conditions in which it becomes tion of future reproductive potential, con-
imperative to take up, for the sake of one’s structs this flesh as a sign, and reads it to
own continued survival as a subject, a set of enculturate the body. Gender attribution is
practices that precipitates one’s exclusion compulsory; it codes and deploys our bod-
from a naturalized order of existence that ies in ways that materially affect us, yet we
seeks to maintain itself as the only possible choose neither our marks nor the meanings
basis for being a subject. However, by mo- they carry.11 This was the act accomplished
bilizing gendered identities and rendering between the beginning and the end of that
MY WORDS TO VICTOR FRANKENSTEIN 93

short sentence in the delivery room: “It’s a against us. And we do have something else
girl.” This was the act that recalled all the to say, if you will but listen to the monsters:
anguish of my own struggles with gender. the possibility of meaningful agency and ac-
But this was also the act that enjoined my tion exists, even within fields of domination
complicity in the non-consensual gendering that bring about the universal cultural rape
of another. A gendering violence is the of all flesh. Be forewarned, however, that
founding condition of human subjectivity; taking up this task will remake you in the
having a gender is the tribal tattoo that process.
makes one’s personhood cognizable. I By speaking as a monster in my personal
stood for a moment between the pains of voice, by using the dark, watery images of
two violations, the mark of gender and the Romanticism and lapsing occasionally into
unlivability of its absence. Could I say its brooding cadences and grandiose pos-
which one was worse? Or could I only say tures, I employ the same literary techniques
which one I felt could best be survived? Mary Shelley used to elicit sympathy for
How can finding one’s self prostrate and her scientist’s creation. Like that creature, I
powerless in the presence of the Law of the assert my worth as a monster in spite of the
Father not produce an unutterable rage! conditions my monstrosity requires me to
What difference does it make if the father face, and redefine a life worth living. I have
in this instance was a pierced, tatooed, pur- asked the Miltonic questions Shelley poses
ple-haired punk fag anarchist who helped in the epigraph of her novel: “Did I request
his dyke friend get pregnant? Phallogocen- thee, Maker, from my clay to mould me
tric language, not its particular speaker, is man? Did I solicit thee from darkness to
the scalpel that defines our flesh. I defy that promote me?” With one voice, her monster
Law in my refusal to abide by its original and I answer “no” without debasing our-
decree of my gender. Though I cannot es- selves, for we have done the hard work of
cape its power, I can move through its constituting ourselves on our own terms,
medium. Perhaps if I move furiously against the natural order. Though we
enough, I can deform it in my passing to forego the privilege of naturalness, we are
leave a trace of my rage. I can embrace it not deterred, for we ally ourselves instead
with a vengeance to rename myself, declare with the chaos and blackness from which
my transsexuality, and gain access to the Nature itself spills forth.12
means of my legible reinscription. Though If this is your path, as it is mine, let me
I may not hold the stylus myself, I can offer whatever solace you may find in this
move beneath it for my own deep self-sus- monstrous benediction: May you discover
taining pleasures. the enlivening power of darkness within
To encounter the transsexual body, to yourself. May it nourish your rage. May
apprehend a transgendered consciousness your rage inform your actions, and your ac-
articulating itself, is to risk a revelation of tions transform you as you struggle to
the constructedness of the natural order. transform your world.
Confronting the implications of this con-
structedness can summon up all the viola-
tion, loss, and separation inflicted by the
gendering process that sustains the illusion
of naturalness. My transsexual body literal- NOTES
izes this abstract violence. As the bearers of * Essayet er genoptrykt med tilladelse fra forfatte-
this disquieting news, we transsexuals often ren og Duke University Press. Det blev først trykt i
GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 1994/
suffer for the pain of others, but we do not
1: 237-254. Senere er det bl.a. blevet optrykt i
willingly abide the rage of others directed Stryker, Susan og Whittle, Stephen (2006): The
94 KVINDER, KØN & FORSKNING NR. 3-4 2011

Transgender Studies Reader. Routledge, New York: This essay uses “transgender” in a more recent
244-256. Teksten bringes her uden ændringer sense, however, than its original one. That is, I use
bortset fra enkelte ortografiske rettelser. (red.) it here as an umbrella term that refers to all identi-
ties or practices that cross over, cut across, move
1. While this comment is intended as a monster’s between, or otherwise queer socially constructed
disdainful dismissal, it nevertheless alludes to a sex/gender boundaries. The term includes, but is
substantial debate on the status of transgender not limited to, transsexuality, heterosexual trans-
practices and identities in lesbian feminism. H. S. vestism, gay drag, butch lesbianism, and such non-
Hubin, in a sociology dissertation in progress at European identities as the Native American berd-
Brandeis University, argues that the pronounced ache or the Indian Hijra. Like “queer,” “transgen-
demographic upsurge in the female-to-male trans- der” may also be used as a verb or an adjective. In
sexual population during the 1970s and 1980s is this essay, transsexuality is considered to be a cul-
directly related to the ascendancy within lesbian- turally and historically specific transgender prac-
ism of a “cultural feminism” that disparaged and tice/identity through which a transgendered sub-
marginalized practices smacking of an unliberated ject enters into a relationship with medical, psycho-
“gender inversion” model of homosexuality – es- therapeutic, and juridical institutions in order to
pecially the butch-femme roles associated with gain access to certain hormonal and surgical tech-
working-class lesbian bar culture. Cultural femi- nologies for enacting and embodying itself.
nism thus consolidated a lesbian-feminist alliance 3. Mikuteit 3-4, heavily edited for brevity and clar-
with heterosexual feminism on a middle-class basis ity.
by capitulating to dominant ideologies of gender. 4. The preceding paragraph draws extensively on,
The same suppression of transgender aspects of and sometimes paraphrases, O’Hartigan and
lesbian practice, I would add, simultaneously Kahler.
raised the spectre of male-to-female transsexual 5. See Laqueur 1-7, for a brief discussion of the
lesbians as a particular threat to the stability and Enlightenment’s effect on constructions of gender.
purity of nontranssexual lesbian-feminist identity. Feminist interpretations of Frankenstein to which
See Echols for the broader context of this debate, Brooks responds include Gilbert and Gubar, Jaco-
and Raymond for the most vehement example of bus, and Homans.
the anti-transgender position. 6. Openly transsexual speech similarly subverts the
2. The current meaning of the term “transgender” logic behind a remark by Bloom, 218,
is a matter of some debate. The word was original- that “a beautiful ‘monster,’ or even a passable one,
ly coined as a noun in the 1970s by people who would not have been a monster.”
resisted categorization as either transvestites or 7. Billings and Urban, 269, document especially
transsexuals, and who used the term to describe well the medical attitude toward transsexual sur-
their own identity. Unlike transsexuals but like gery as one of technical mastery of the body;
transvestites, transgenders do not seek surgical al- Irvine, 259, suggests how transsexuality fits into
teration of their bodies but do habitually wear the development of scientific sexology, though
clothing that represents a gender other than the caution is advised in uncritically accepting the in-
one to which they were assigned at birth. Unlike terpretation of transsexual experience she presents
transvestites but like transsexuals, however, trans- in this chapter. Meyer, in spite of some extremely
genders alter the vestimentary coding of their gen- transphobic concluding comments, offers a good
der only episodically or primarily for sexual gratifi- account of the medicalization of transgender iden-
cation; rather, they consistently and publicly ex- tities; for a transsexual perspective on the scientific
press an ongoing commitment to their claimed agenda behind sex reassignment techniques, see
gender identities through the same visual represen- Stone, especially the section entitled “All of reality
tational strategies used by others to signify that in late capitalist culture lusts to become an image
gender. The logic underlying this terminology re- for its own security” (280-304).
flects the widespread tendency to construe “gen- 8. Russo 49-50: “Homosexual parallels in Fran-
der” as the socio-cultural manifestation of a mater- kenstein (1931) and Bride of Frankenstein (1935)
ial “sex.” Thus, while transsexuals express their arose from a vision both films had of the monster
identities through a physical change of embodi- as an antisocial figure in the same way that gay
ment, transgenders do so through a non-corporeal people were ‘things’ that should not have hap-
change in public gender expression that is never- pened. In both films the homosexuality of director
theless more complex than a simple change of James Whale may have been a force in the vision.”
clothes. 9. In the absence of a reliable critical history of
MY WORDS TO VICTOR FRANKENSTEIN 95

transsexuality, it is best to turn to the standard · Daly, Mary (1989): Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics
medical accounts themselves: see especially Benja- of Radical Feminism. Beacon, Boston.
min, Green and Money, and Stoller. For overviews · Echols, Alice (1989): Daring to Be Bad: Radical
of cross-cultural variation in the institutionalization Feminism in America, 1967-1975. University Press
of sex/gender, see Williams, “Social Construtions/ of Minnesota, Minneapolis.
Essential Characters: A Cross-Cultural Viewpoint,” · Gilbert, Sandra, and Susan Gubar (1979):Hor-
252-76; Shapiro 262-68. For accounts of particu- ror’s Twin: Mary Shelley’s Monstrous Eve, in: The
lar institutionalizations of transgender practices Madwoman in the Attic. Yale University Press,
that employ surgical alteration of the genitals, see New Haven: 213-47.
Nanda; Roscoe. Adventurous readers curious · Green, Kichard, and John Money (eds.) (1969):
about contemporary non-transsexual genital alter- Transsexualism and Sex Reassignment. Johns Hop-
ation practices may contact E.N.I.G.M.A. (Erotic kins University Press, Baltimore.
Neoprimitive International Genital Modification · Guillaumin, Colette (1988): Race and Nature:
Association), SASE to LaFarge-werks, 2329 N. The System of Marks, in: Feminist Studies 1988/8:
Leavitt, Chicago, 1L 60647. 25-44.
10. See Butler, “Introduction,” 4 and passim. · Homans, Margaret (1986): Bearing Demons:
11. A substantial body of scholarship informs these Frankenstein’s Circumvention of the Maternal, in:
observations: Gayle Rubin provides a productive Bearing the Word. Chicago University Press,
starting point for developing not only a political Chicago: 100-19.
economy of sex, but of gendered subjectivity; on · Irvine, Janice (1990): Disorders of Desire: Sex and
gender recruitment and attribution, see Kessler and Gender in Modern American Sexology. Temple Uni-
McKenna; on gender as a system of marks that na- versity Press, Philadelphia.
turalizes sociological groups based on supposedly · Jacobus, Mary (1986): Is There a Woman in this
shared material similarities, I have been influenced Text?, in: Reading Woman: Essays in Feminist Cri-
by some ideas on race in Guillaumin and by Wittig. ticism. Columbia University Press, New York: 83-
12 Although I mean “chaos” here in its general 109.
sense, it is interesting to speculate about the po- · Kahler, Frederic (1993): Does Filisa Blame Seat-
tential application of scientific chaos theory to tle? Editorial in: Bay Times [Sail Francisco] 3 June,
model the emergence of stable structures of gen- 1993: 23.
dered identities out of the unstable matrix of ma- · Kessler, Suzanne J., and Wendy McKenna
terial attributes, and on the production of prolifer- (1985): Gender: An Ethnomethodological Ap-
ating gender identities from a relatively simple set proach. University Press of Chicago, Chicago.
of gendering procedures. · Laqueur, Thomas (1990): Making Sex: Body and
Genderfrom the Greeks to Freud. Harvard Universi-
ty Press, Cambridge, MA.
· Meyer, Morris (1991): I Dream of Jeannie:
Transsexual Striptease as Scientific Display, in: The
Drama Review 1991/35.1: 25-42.
LITERATURE · Mikuteit, Debbie (1986): Letter. Coming Up!
· Benjamin, Harry (1966): The Transsexual Phe- Feb. 1986: 3-4.
nomenon. Julian, New York. · Nanda, Serena (1990): Neither Man Nor Woman:
· Billings, Dwight B., and Thomas Urban (1981): The Hijras of’ India. Wadsworth, Belmont, Cali-
“The Socio-Medical Construction of Transsexual- fornia.
ism: An Interpretation and Critique,” in: Social · O’Hartigan, Margaret D. (1993): I Accuse, in:
Problems 1981/29: 266-82. Bay Times [San Francisco] 20 May 1993: 11.
· Bloom, Harold (1965): Afterword, in: Franken- · Raymond, Janice G. (1979): The Transsexual
stein, or The Modern Prometheus. Signet/ NAL, Empire: The Making of the She-Male. Beacon,
New York: 212-23. Org.: Bloom, Harold (1965): Boston.
Frankenstein, or The New Prometheus, in: Parti- · Roscoe, Will (1994): Priests of the Goddess:
san Review 1965/32: 611-18. Gender Transgression in the Ancient World,
· Brooks, Peter (1993): Body Work: Objects of De- American Historical Association Meeting. 9 Janu-
sire in Modern Narrative. Harvard University ary 1994, San Francisco.
Press, Cambridge, Massachussets. · Rubin. Gayle (1975): The Traffic in Women:
· Butler, Judith (1993): Bodies That Matter: On the Notes on the ‘Political Economy’ of Sex,
Discursive Limits of “Sex”. Routledge, New York. in: Toward an Anthropology of Women. Ed. Rayna
96 KVINDER, KØN & FORSKNING NR. 3-4 2011

K. Reiter. Monthly Review P, New York: 157- · Stone, Sandy (1991): The Empire Strikes Back: A
210. Posttranssexual Manifesto, in: Body Guards: The
· Riisso, Vito (1981): The Celluloid Closet: Homo Critical Politics of Gender Ambiguity. Epstein, Ju-
sexuality in the Movies. Harper and Row, New lia, and Straub, Kristina Ceds.). Routledge, New
York. York: 280-304.
· Shapiro, Judith (1991): Transsexualism: Reflec- · Williams, Walter (1986): The Spirit and the Flesh:
tions on the Persistence of Gender and the Muta- Sexual Diversity in American lndian Culture. Bea-
bility of Sex, in: Body Guards: The Cultural Politics con, Boston.
of Gender Ambiguity. Ed. Epstein, Julia, and · Wittig, Monique (1992): The Mark of Gender,
Straub, Kristina. Routledge, New York: 248-79. in: The Straight Mind and Other Essays. Beacon,
· Shelley, Mary (1965): Frankenstein, or The Mod- Boston: 70-89.
ern Prometheus. Org.: 1817. Signet/NAL, New
York.
· Stoller, Robert (1968): Sex and Gender. Vol. 1. Susan Stryker
Science House, New York. Associate Professor of Gender and Women’s
· Stoller, Robert (1975): The Transsexual Experi- Studies
ment. Vol. 2 of Sex and Gender. Hogarth, Lon- Director of the Institute for LGBT Studies
don. University of Arizona